The Year of the Horse edition began in the shadow of the editions that came before it.
Within OUMO's zodiac series, the Dragon and Snake years are two hard acts to follow. The Dragon edition used open surface relief — strong dimensionality, something you could both see and feel. In daily use, however, the raised ridges were not kind to customers who care about grip, almost sharp against the hand. The Snake edition sat at the opposite extreme: a showcase of the limits of our craft at the time, where the value of the collector's piece ran far ahead of the value of the daily tool. That path was never in consideration for this year.
So the Horse edition had to do three things at once: restrained aesthetics, culture held inward rather than displayed outward, and honest function in the hand.
The first decision was the "Ming" handle. Square and substantial, it carries the design language of OUMO's future — every new OUMO design from here will extend the same DNA.
For the process, we first tried fired-foil texturing in a horse motif, but its resolution set a ceiling on how far the aesthetics could reach: a blurred image cannot carry the word "limited." What opened the way was "Glaze." I saw its potential from the moment the technique was created, but in recent years it has never evolved further — it demands too much labor, and above all an unbroken stream of design inspiration, an uncertainty that naturally blocks it from any sustained production. For the Horse year, we decided to take the gamble: carve the core, and seal it beneath a transparent shell.
The question then became: how does the horse of the Horse year connect to a certain masculine romance? The answer was Chitu.
In Chinese culture, Chitu is no ordinary horse — it carries martial valor and loyalty. With Chitu as the subject, the Horse year rises from the image of a lucky horse into that of a war horse. Around it we added mountains and rivers, lotus, and plantain leaves in the modeling, so the whole piece carries the presence of Chinese civilization.
One thing was still missing. I wrote an inscription, "The Ode to Chitu," drawing on the frontier poetry of the dynasties and borrowing from its classic lines — a small way of expressing my love for my own culture:
《赤兔铭》
赤兔嘶风血满鞍，
乾坤丙午斩楼兰。
镌成白骨封侯事，
掌上犹存杀气寒。
Chitu neighs into the wind, blood upon the saddle;
Bingwu shakes the world — the blade takes Loulan.
Carved are the white bones that bought a general's name,
And the palm still holds the cold breath of the slain.
I wrote the poem myself. To match its intent, I took the Slender Gold script — the razor-edged calligraphy of Emperor Huizong of Song — and sharpened it further, weaving in the movement of semi-cursive brushwork: keeping the charm while giving it the temper of a man who has campaigned in every direction. It was then engraved, character by character, onto every handle.
For the core, we use stabilized wood and synthetic turquoise; further materials may join the final edition.
Thank you for reading.
— Carry